An industrial controller may be a separate device or it may be integrated into a computer, a PC, a stand-alone unit or a drive.
Prior industrial controllers known previously for automation of technical processes have been based essentially either on a “programmable controller functionality”, a “motion control (MC) functionality” or a technological functionality. Since a certain scope of function is specified with respect to such functionalities, optimal adaptation to the requirements of a specific process is limited; an entire group of functions is often superfluous in a specific application (e.g., any functionality for packaging machines might be superfluous when using an MC controller for machine tools).
German Patent 197 40 550 describes a device that executes a control program for controlling a technical process and/or controlling the motion of a processing machine. This control program comprises a plurality of software modules. Process control functionalities of known programmable controllers and motion functionalities of known MC controllers are implemented in a uniform configurable control system. However, individual software modules here are executed by a partial subgroup control, so that a central processing unit is to be provided for each software module.
In addition, German Patent 198 53 205 describes a method of controlling technical processes, where the method is based on instantiability and on-demand interleaving of software components with a preselectable, at least parameterizable, functionality. The interleaving and design of the software components are not optimized, however.
Therefore, an object of this invention is to create optimal features of an industrial controller with regard to its control structure, as well as its functionality, for different control tasks and different boundary conditions and requirements of the basic technical processes in a simple manner.
The inventors have based this finding on the discovery that the run time system and/or engineering system of the industrial controller operates both a programmable controller functionality and a motion functionality and/or a technological functionality. The possibility of dynamic loading of function code into the run time system and/or engineering system of the industrial controller permits an optimal sizing of the controller, i.e., scaling, must be possible.